Angelina in Kumasi

14 hours on a bus and 10 hours in a hospital has never been so very worth it. 

Imagine for a moment that you have grown up in a rural farming community. You never attended school and you speak only the local language, a few key words in Twi, and even fewer words in English. You are in your early 20s but the furthest you have traveled is a few hours away from your community, and never to a large city.

Now imagine you are told you will travel with two people you've only just met, who speak only English, and a few choice words in your language, to a city 14 hours away. Not only a city, but the second largest city in the country. Instead of pre-savannah you will enter the tropics, where the people eat different foods and speak different languages, and where you will see a large city for the first time in your life: overpasses on the roads, buildings taller than you've ever seen them, and a hospital with hundreds of doctors (the hospital in your home district has only one doctor). When you arrive at this hospital you will spend hours waiting to see a doctor, and when you finally do they will tell you that they need to operate on your daughter. And that they will do it tomorrow.

If you can imagine this you have a fraction of an understanding of what our young mother has experienced in the past 40 hours. She has taken this all in stride, but every once and a while we catch a look of fear and see how completely overwhelming this experience is for her. Even still, Angelina's mom tells us (through our translator) that she is very grateful for what we are doing.

This has been a learning experience for me also. I have never needed to navigate travel for a mother and child before, argue with a bus driver to get a refund on our 'non-refundable' tickets because he lied to us about the departure time, or hold a grown woman's hand as we wove our way through traffic in the night because she was terrified of the city. I have never had to figure out a foreign medical system, let alone learn my way around one of the biggest teaching hospitals in Ghana.

And yet in all of this I have seen us be provided for again and again:

• I stumbled upon a bus leaving for Kumasi just when we needed to go, allowing us to refund our tickets and get on our way to Kumasi, saving us hours of travel time. 
• Our friend found us a translator in Kumasi who was able to translate from Twi to Buli, so our mom knew what was happening at all times during our 10 hour day at the hospital, something we couldn't have dreamed of having on hand (before that our translator was still a phone call away).
• When we arrived too early for the cleft clinic we were able to sort out all the paperwork and pre-assessments that might have held Angelina up at the clinic, and managed to get 'our baby' first in the queue. This also gave us a chance to see all of the babies coming in for their post-surgery follow-ups and see the beautiful success stories coming out of this clinic. 
• When we finally saw the team of specialists they were amazed we had traveled all the way from Sandema to have Angelina cared for. I could hardly hold the excitement back when I heard the surgeons begin to discuss their operating schedule for the next day, and hearing them negotiate with each other. They offered to operate on her tomorrow! Not only that, but Angelina's surgery will be covered by her health insurance.  
• Once it was determined the operation would be this week rushed medical and lab tests - and with the support of the doctors were able to push the results through the system. When we arrived back with the results we were told we'd missed all the doctors and we would have to come back tomorrow, but one doctor saw us and stayed behind to make arrangements for Angelina to get into pre-op so her surgery could go ahead. By 4:30pm Angelina was checked into the pre-op ward, getting ready for her surgery tomorrow. 

There will still be a lot of bills for Angelina, although we don't know yet what all they will be. We will have to pay for her stay in hospital, and for all the medications she will need,  pay for a longer stay in Kumasi and 2 day a trip home (in lieu of the stressful 1 day trip). But it's overwhelmingly clear that Angelina is being cared for and provided for. If you feel so prompted you can still donate to cover the expenses of all this week (and the future follow-up visits) will entail.

Thank you for playing a role in supporting Angelina through your contributions and through your prayers. Without both of these this trip to Kumasi, and the opportunity to give Angelina a new smile, would not be possible. 

I'm overwhelming grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this. And giddy when I think about how beautifully it has come together. It's nothing short of divine provision.